The need for mobile apps for businesses is much more than maintaining an online presence. It is a source to generate massive revenues, expanding the customer base, generating new business prospects, reinforcing brand image, etc. Everybody has something to offer and thus, in such a dog-fight, it is extremely necessary for businesses to lure customers in different ways to ensure their retention and loyalty towards their service and brand. When the user is concerned, it is not the technicality of the app that counts. It is the features and the interface of the app that makes the difference to the user, which decides its fate and in turn the fate of the company. Thus, it is important that user engagement should be given top most priority and with this mindset, the UI/UX of the app should be designed so that the user never feels the need to opt for another app. Let’s delve into the basics of UI/UX of mobile apps and how it helps in customer retention.

What is UI? : A User Interface (UI) is the space where a human and a machine interacts with each other. The medium of interaction depends on the environment that constitutes the individual and the machine. When mobile phones and humans interact with each other, the interaction takes place through a Graphical User Interface (GUI). The GUI is not restricted only to the tabs and navigation menu in an app. In fact, the entire functioning of the app depends upon it.

What is UX? : A User Experience (UX), as the name suggests, is the experience a user has while using the app. Their emotions and behavior when using the app account for this. It comprises of pragmatic, worthy, meaningful facets of human – mobile app interaction. A flawless UX guarantees the return and loyalty of a consumer. Developing UX of an app involves a lot of research, analysis of user behavior, a rock solid planning and many other things.

Now that we have a brief idea about what a UI/UX is, let’s discuss some of its vital components below.

Usual Suspects: The most basic requirements to make an app appealing, is the use of understandable or at least familiar symbols, icons, tabs, etc. This makes the user feel at home and familiar with functionalities of those elements. The colour schemes and themes for the app should not repel the user. For instance, a smooth and bright colour scheme makes the user happy. Also, whilst these things are paid attention to, users should also be given the freedom to customize the look of the app according to their will and mood. This makes the user feel special.

Keep The Confusions At Bay: While creating an app, the prime focus should be on the simplicity of the design. An app’s UI should be self-explanatory and just in case your app is overloaded with features, make sure to include a small app tour in the beginning. This makes users familiar with your app and enables them to use its functions and features with ease.

Lags & Jitters Are For Losers: The last thing an app’s UI should do is to bog down the speed of the user’s device. A user would opt for anything but, an app that slows down or freezes his device. To ensure a faster UI, the app should shed excess load. The smaller the size of the app, the faster it is. It should also be duly noted that the app should be swift when working online. An app that takes time load even when the device has access to a fast internet connection, has some defects and needs to be checked and corrected on a priority basis.

Consistency:An app should maintain its consistency when the user navigates from one page to another. The layout should almost replicate itself so that a user doesn’t encounter a major change. It makes the user familiar with new pages of the app and helps him in efficiently navigating through the app and the new functions that he comes across.

Conclusion: UI is what a user first comes across, and his return and loyalty to your app and brand depends entirely upon his experience and interaction with the app. It is important for businesses to preserve and expand their customer base and although, technical aspects are important, the UI/UX of the app can’t be ignored as that is the driving force for customer retention.

About Techugo: We’re a mobile app development companyand we develop mobile apps for businesses customized to their needs. We realize that UI/UX forms an essential component of the mobile app development process and hence, our development process especially focuses on the look and feel of the app apart from the technical specification to provide users with an overall satisfying experience.

We all are surrounded by the mobile apps and technology is used highly in every aspect in our vicinity. Now the level of mobile app revolution has reached to the level where it is beyond the reach of desertion. Albeit, there are various reasons to pick the mobile app revolution, but due to the instant hike in the mobile users, it has increased the demand of mobile apps to be adopted by every industry and domain. Mobile apps are useful not only for the users, but for the business owners too, because it has shrunk the world to an accessible axis where anybody at any point of time can enjoy the freedom of accessing the required information or services.

Mobile Apps Make The Business Accessible

It is not easy for any business owner to work 24/7, apart from some exceptional cases, but on the regular basis, it turns out to be a hard task to accomplish and even you can’t access the global customers from your brick and mortar business premise. Mobile apps are adopted smartly by every industry across the globe, and people buy the products, regardless of their time-zone, language barrier or distance. Mobile apps have brought every product at our fingertips, where we can make a purchase with a convenience of time & place. Your business gets accessed by all across the globe and they can make an instant purchase.

Opens A New Window of Opportunities

In the era of competition, it gets a rat-race to compete with other business. Websites are used quite lesser being compared with the dedicated mobile apps for your product, so the regular traffic on mobile app helps you to understand the customer behavior, also the review/feedback/ rating system helps you to improve your product or fix the product issue, according to your customer’s requirement. Mobile app analytics help you to identify the positive and negative indicators, so you can fix them in-time to avoid losing your customer and you would also receive an expanded window of opportunity to attach new customers to your revenue basket.

At Techugo, we take pride in developing the mobile apps for the leading brands to startups and our mobile app development team has the expertise to create a unique variety of mobile app solution for your business needs, which would help you to showcase your idea, goal and dream in the most informative and engaging way. Our team of top mobile app designers is here to help assist you with every step of your mobile app development strategy. We consult, brainstorm, manage the project, design, develop, test, launch, and market apps in the best possible way. You can get in touch with our team to discuss further your concept to bring into reality. The discussion would help you to gain a better insight of your app requirement.

HOW TO BUILD HEALTHCARE APP

Why Healthcare App

Health is an integral part of every one’s life, and its relevance can never be taken for granted. Due to the spark of technology, it has now become possible throughout the world to diagnose and treat new and existing diseases. Undoubtedly, apps are the future of healthcare, but if you have a game-changing medical app idea, you need to take special care to protect the precious data your app will handle. In the current market scenario, launching a healthcare app is a good idea considering the number of potential users across the globe. But there are a few things that are good to know before you start developing your own healthcare app:

A Unique UI/UX for Health app

Health app is basically used by the people who either need it for others or need it for themselves, in either case the technology, which is used in healthcare app, must be user-friendly, but the healthcare app has its own set of requirements. Good UI/UX is required for every app, but with the high frequency of data input and amount of data in healthcare apps, the design needs some extra effort. In order to develop great healthcare apps, the importance of UX (user experience) and UI (user interface) design can not be avoided.

Since the health app is patient-centric. The key is to create a design that makes the patient process flow as seamless as possible. If the healthcare app is patient-centric, then everything must have the user experience of the patient in mind. A healthcare app is accessed by people who are medically disadvantaged, so the UI should be much easier to access than other apps. This means mostly people who are ill or undergoing symptoms of ill health or other chronic conditions should be able to navigate through the app with a minimum modicum of effort.

People with various levels of health discomforts use this app, so the user experience must be crafted with the most positive look, feel in terms of content, color schemes, alert sounds. The app should be able to create a positive ambience for the users that their health care concerns will be addressed here without any hassles.

Healthcare App Data Security and Confidentiality

Healthcare apps need to be specially taken care of due to its security and confidential aspects. While making healthcare apps designers and developers need to take one extra step to make sure that their products aren’t just functional and beautiful, but also safe. The first and the foremost functionality to be watched for, is the apps’ functionality, which would ensure that user data is protected from data thieves and other privacy threats.

Consider the regulations based on the app market, because the healthcare data is so sensitive, which can directly affect the user’s safety and privacy. For instance, for an app to be launched in US market, the app must comply with the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act (HIPAA). Same goes for the app to be launched in the European or Asian market. Do check and comply all the rules & regulations of the concerned app market.

Include the privacy policy that explains what information is being collected and how it will be used. As the owner of a healthcare app you need to keep patients’ protected health information (PHI) a top priority. On avoiding the regulations, the chances of getting your app rejected go much higher, because even the app stores are very particular about the health care guidelines.

Value Added Services

You should get the optimum use of your healthcare app. Add more number of emergency services to your healthcare app to ensure maximum effectiveness and value for the healthcare app. Healthcare app is fully based and focus on diagnosis and suggestions, add Ambulances on call, ICU on wheels, online pharmacies and home delivery of medication after diagnosis and prescription are complete.

App Testing

App testing is a crucial phase to any app development. No user wants to use a bug installed app, so make a goal to make your app error free. Specially the app testing in healthcare apps, is much more required, failing which can lead to some serious consequences.

The app testing can be performed either manually or with automation tools, but needs to be performed on the specific guidelines, such as: testing the security and authenticity for PII, PHI and other regulations such as HIPAA compliance, testing of the app data from different units, from different devices, networks, and locations, testing with poor connectivity, testing the app on different mobile platforms (iOS, Android, Windows etc.), and browsers for compatibility.

In the case of an emergency if health care providers cannot access patient data on the app, it may lead to the death of the patient or may lead to some form of impairment, so the app testing has to be done from every aspect and in every situations like signal drops, refresh rates for the app data etc. This step is most necessary, since the level of dependence and criticality is higher in this nature of app than others.

It’s not surprising anymore, the way the people adapt to mobile technology and looking for convenient approaches during illness has also increased the demand for mobile health apps.

If you have a brilliant idea to help people live healthier, more fulfilling live,you can get in touch with our team to discuss further your concept to bring into reality. The discussion would help you to gain a better insight of your app requirement. With Techugo, you can create a healthcare app, which can make a huge difference in the life of a patient.